You can breathe easy, friend, we’re good now. This is my old WWII Nuclear Bunker. She ain’t pretty, but we’ll be safe here. We’ve got enough supplies on those shelves to last us months — maybe even years. Ladies, grab us a couple of Schlitz, would you? Yep, not even those bastard Nazis would be stubborn enough to wait here that long. Oh, and don’t worry about them breaking down the door either. That thing we just shut behind us is eight inches of solid steel. I reinforced the floor too. They don’t stand a chance…

What do you mean, who are they?

You’ve never heard of the, “Grammar Nazis”?

Have you ever even been on the internet?

No, they’re not exclusive to the net — they’re right outside the door, you dullard. They’re Grammar Nazis! They’re the secret police force of language, working either for, or in league with the dastardly Webster cooperation, and they’re on a clandestine mission for a unilateral totalitarian regime-like standard for talking, writing, and, soon, overall expression.

Somebody call me?

See, language is smooshed, shortened, squeezed, tightened, altered, cramped, clipped, cut, “lol’d”, and “haha’d” more and more, each and every day — and the Nazi’s can’t stand this…

They prefer to work under the stringent principles of their sacred symbol, the four spoked, red and white, “W” (believing that the rest of us should fall in line as well), which states that they will simply not accept anything but perfection — and all the WTF’s, LOL’s, HAHA’s, OMG’s and ZOMG’s of this modern-day just won’t fit into their narrow, Webster defined, Aryan-like list of acceptable words. Never mind that these particular terms are acronyms, allowing for faster points to be made, (saving us all some valuable time in a minute-by-minute world), these sycophants toward Webster simply do not care. A word is only a word, when it’s a word written in one of their holy books.

But, hell, I say words should be words when they properly convey a thought — AmIrite?

The way I look at it, language shouldn’t be held to such rigorous standards.

See, friend, in its essence, language is just a place-keeper tool, used in lieu of mind reading. Seriously, no joke — look it up! Take a look into the Shannon Weaver model of language, which is the linguistic basis for all communication, and you’ll see just what I’m talking about. Basically, when a person wishes to share a thought, it first has to formulate somewhere, right? Namely, their head — and then you need someone else to share with (otherwise it’s just thinking). If the thought is complex, and hard to describe with non verbal cues alone, well than we have to encode our thoughts into words, and then speak them through a medium — in the case of speech, air — which it then travels through to reach your ear, and you can interpret it in any way you see fit.

So, in the mean time, I’m left to communicate crudely, pruning bits of my original thoughts to suffice ever-dwindling attention spans and time budgets…

HEY — pay attention!

I know they’re cute, but there’s no rush, we’ll be down here for weeks… plenty of time to charm them over.

However… Ladies? Could you tie up the robes? It’s distracting. Thanks! (Love ya!)

Now where was I?

Right!

IMHO, language is inefficient enough while spoken, and, when we talk, we’ve got emotion, inflection, pacing, gesticulation, eye contact, and body language backing us up. Also, because of all these things, all these cues we’re reading into, we get a general idea of the listener’s attention, which, then in turn, helps us to adjust accordingly to entertain (and, thus, know that we’re being heard — we’ve always got an ear while we’re entertaining).

Chappelle, please come back -- We miss you...

When we write though — which is just the same as speech in terms of communication, save for the changing of the medium; from air, to paper or computer screens — the inefficiencies of language are really highlighted, and to an extreme. That’s because, while writing, we don’t have the crutches of audible pacing or inflection to help place emphasis on our words, we’re left to use only the Nazis goosestepping mantras — the finite words and ways found in their dictatorial dictionary’s, and proper grammar propaganda texts — to convey our thoughts.

But they’re our thoughts!

And , I don’t know about you, (I mean, you look like a nice fellow — just not very bright…), but my thoughts are often wild, eccentric, interconnected to many things, and, because of all this, wholly difficult to express in this stiflingly rigid way. Being stuck crafting true communication with words which must interlock in a specific way, like Lego blocks, can sometimes hinder full elucidation. I mean, who really cares if I follow “proper sentence structure” (or use of quotes), just so long as you understand me, right?

Now, don’t get me wrong good buddy… Oop — Hang on.

Ladies, another brewski por-favor.

Better make it two.

Grassy ass.

Ahhh, that’s better… Anyway, I’m not saying that we should all just make up words, all willy-nilly like — nobody would understand us — but I am saying that there’s nothing wrong with a little tweak here and there. After all, that’s how language was devised in the first place. Playing around. Otherwise, I mean, what? We’re just done? So, that’s it? We did it? *Language complete*?

No! No effing way.

Language is alive. It’s living. It’s breathing. It has a heartbeat to match the times and trials it goes through, just like we do — or at least it should — and when jerks, like the ones outside this door, try to arrest the language, the only thing really getting locked away is true communication, ya dig?

This is why I’m saying that, “Irregardless” is, most certainly, a word.

Nazis, Kitty. "Take that Nazis"... Sorry, he's drunk -- again...

I mean, sure, we’ve already got “Regardless”. But, as a word, doesn’t that sound a bit clipped to you? Curt, even? Go ahead, try saying “Regardless” without sounding like a prick. Narry impossible, I tell ya! But, “Irregardless”… now that’s sexy. It’s not quite as sharp either. It’s almost like it’s laughing at itself in its own usage.

If “Regardless” were a warden dismissing evidence at a parole hearing, thus denying an early release, “Irregardless” would be a wild haired and wizened Scientist, mucking up a great point with a bit of unessential information and a tangent off topic, and thus, a wave of his hand and a muttering of the word can get him back to his point.

Why can’t there be room for both?

Now, again, if we could read minds, than none of this would matter. But we can’t. And, since spoken language has the monopoly on inflection and timbre, I say that the written word should be a little looser. Give us scribes a touch more elbow room to show you just what we mean — and how we mean to say it.

Ya feel me?!

Speaking of which, did you know that there used to be such a thing as an, “Interrobang“, which was a mixture of a question mark and an exclamation point (just like what I had to use two symbols to accomplish in the previous sentence) yep, you guessed it — killed by the Nazis.

As a matter of fact there was once this crazy guy, named, Hervé Bazin, who’d extended the idea of an, “Irony mark”, first proposed by the late 19th century french poet, Alcanter de Brahm, into a series of other punctuations, including; an authority point, a certitude point, a doubt point, indignation, love — and many more.

Wanna guess what happened to him?

Danm Nazis…

Look, as we move along, and evolve as a culture — we naturally gain knowledge. With knowledge, naturally comes preference. And, with preference, reason. Naturally. Thus, ample deliberation becomes a necessity to the newer, preference ridden, thought processes of the world — as, there is simply more to say. And, aside from just talking, there is much more going on — words trigger emotions.

Whether it’s “Irregardless” you’d want to use, to soften up the sound of your meaning, or “Spoked” (which appeared at the top of this page — got ya!) to describe something with spokes, or “Disinscent” to describe something with a removed incentive, or LOL to say that you’re laughing out loud, I say — SCREW THE NAZIS, and SCREW WEBSTER, you communicate however you’d like!

*Pound, Pound, Pound*

“We’ve come back!”

“We don’t care”

“We a have a plasma cutter”

(Oh crap)

“We heard what you were saying about us.”

“Oh yea, what do you think, Sauerkraut?”

“I think I can’t wait until I get home, to tell my wife all about how I squoze your scrawny, little, stupid neck”

“Bad news for you then, buddy”

“what”

“Squoze isn’t a word”

*Bang!, bang!, bang!*

“Guess we won’t have to worry about ole’ Krauss anymore…”

*Fluouoshhhh!!!*

“But it sound’s like his cronies are still lighting that torch, crap… Looks like we’re in for a shootout, friend.”

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Bahahahaaa! Liking your blog style. I had a boss that used “irregardless” every day and it made my skin crawl. You’ve made me almost (gasp) accept it? hahaha! And I never knew the word interrobang until now!? I’m quite smitten with it though. Thank you! Robes secured!!

Thank you! Had mucho fun with this one, glad you liked. I just want people to express their own freaky selves any-damn-way they please — and if we have to break convention to that end, well than I say it’s worth it!

Communication is the deal. The only problem is that modern words tend to leave a huge proportion of the planet behind if the accepted medium is not universal. Case in point eg. Michael Jackson’s new album (at the time) is bad…………..oh, really that’s a shame……….no, no, baadd…………that bad………..no no – goood………..What?

Later still ……”Joe Bloggs is real sick, man”……….of that’s a shame……no no .(and so on)……..
It all gets absorbed though and the level of the universal barrel is raised again.

But just in case you think you won the argument here………….I’m gonna dig out my favourite piece of Dickens (only kidding). 🙂

While growing a garden, one must prune what holds back the health of the plant 😉
Just kidding! That was ‘BAD’ (snicker, snicker)… I can see that too, though. I still feel that growth has to happen no matter what, plus growth is often painful anyhow, so it’s all inevitable. Unless we’re talking about “fo-realzies”, because, “for real” is actually shorter — that’s just plain annoying.